Fun as it is to watch President Sheridan as a young geek who 'invented' Space Paranoids...
The poll I'd like to see: Considering the MPAA continued attacks on freedom, and the region coding/Macrovision issues, would you like slashdot to cover American DVD releases or not?
Sure it's possible - for you. But here's a newsflash - most people, (who, by the way, know a lot more about their industries than you) don't know enough about X to configure it. And most don't have either the time or the inclination to learn.
So how the OS is shipped determins how good the fonts look for most people. If you can make it look better, make that the default.
The goals of "making everybody see the light and switch to Linux, thus toppling micro$oft" and "forcing every Linux user to spend hundreds of hours learning about the system" are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.
Race with the Super Mario characters.
Race with the Disney characters.
Race with the Looney Tunes characters.
Race with the Hanna Barbera characters.
Race with the Donkey Kong characters.
Race with the Star Wars characters.
Race with the Austin Powers characters.
Race with the South Park characters.
Race with the Muppet Show characters.
Race with the Disney characters again, except something went wrong and only three disney characters are there.
You know where were heading, don't you? Mary-Kate and Ashley mall racing, that's where.
Let the parents know what the game contains - violence (to what degree?), sexual situations, alcohol, religion, whatever. Don't slap on a 'teen' or 'mature' rating - let them decide whether the content is appropriate for the children.
Not all 13 year olds can handle the same content, and you know not all teen-rated games have the same 'harfulness' to even the average teen, let alone an individual.
Let's face it: the person who has the talent and time to code a game is not always the same person who has the talent and time to script a story, draw the graphics or create sounds. We "need" tools to let these people work together to create the next Loom / The Dig / Monkey Island etc. And a way to get the story writers interested in the first place.
the TiVo is a wonder of UI design. Although not perfect, it's getting there. After a few minutes with the unit, we were one.
This is why it won my fierce loyalty. Software that's designed to be used is so rare in today's world that whenever I find it, I feel like it is my friend. It likes me, and it will do what I ask instead of fighting me.
It's going to take more than capacity to make me even look elsewhere. If another company can do that, TiVo will - I'd rather wait for them than fight with a competitor.
A friend lost 3 work days last week (as did everybody in his company) when their systems got hit. He's been telling the boss for, what, three years now that IIS is a time bomb. Last week's events didn't convince the boss, of course - everybody knows windows is the only OS and IIS is the only web server so we have no choice etc.
I don't know whether to hope this report makes them reconsider - how is my friend supposed to feel if they run over and make Gartner-induced changes after his similar recommendations were repeatedly ignored just because he's a geek and we all know geeks hate microsoft but we smart business types know microsoft is rich so their products must be the best and I'm ranting and raving and need to stop now.
Of course, the 'cube is supposed to have non standard media so even if you could develop on it (much more user friendly according to professional game developers) how would you actually get the code in the machine?
It's amazing, but it seems right now microsoft's product is the only one that embraces (and extends?) hobbyists, with plans for free/cheap SDKs, standard(?) media and - wow - no territorial lockout! Is microsoft the way to go, pioneer of openness and interoperability? refute.
sure, the games have enemies, but the amazing non-violent premise of the games is that helpless animals are trapped in the robotic contraptions and by destroying the machines you can free the animals.
I know a 12 year old girl who can't even tolerate cartoon violence, much less fighting games, and Sonic's her favorite character in the whole world. Every one of these games is a labor of love.
You can get a new Dreamcast with Sonic Adventure, a memory card and another game that has the word Sonic in the title but doesn't really count for $100 new. Various PC Sonic games (CD , Sonic and Knuckles collection etc) Can be found in bargain bins for $5-$20.
Encrypted email. Encrypted instant messages. Encrypted web browsing. Every application developer has to incorporate SSL (or whatever), and whenever identities need to be established there's a different way to do it.
At some point in the future, practically all communication between devices will at least be encrypted, and not by the application. I don't know if we have to wait for IPv6, or even if it will be ready then, but I know that as an application developer when I open a socket I want to specify the minimum level of encryption I want, the maximum I need, and to be able to get an idea of how secure the connection is. And server certificates should not be a barrier for encryption.
As for establishing identities, I'm sure somebody else will have much better idea (validate against a domain's PK server? a completely centralized repository?)
Slashdot Mirror
Does it play .mid files? You know how many months of .mid files fit inside 40GB?
.mid, .mod, .xm, and .s3m files, 2400 BPS upstream both ways...
Kids today, it's MP3 this, MP3 that. Back in my day, we downloaded
And we liked it!
And you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
Corrected we stand. It was several years since I've seen it.
At least they 'invented' games, not 'discovered' them.
Fun as it is to watch President Sheridan as a young geek who 'invented' Space Paranoids...
The poll I'd like to see: Considering the MPAA continued attacks on freedom, and the region coding/Macrovision issues, would you like slashdot to cover American DVD releases or not?
Sure it's possible - for you. But here's a newsflash - most people, (who, by the way, know a lot more about their industries than you) don't know enough about X to configure it. And most don't have either the time or the inclination to learn.
So how the OS is shipped determins how good the fonts look for most people. If you can make it look better, make that the default.
The goals of "making everybody see the light and switch to Linux, thus toppling micro$oft" and "forcing every Linux user to spend hundreds of hours learning about the system" are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.
(half off-topic, I know).
It's like the text is always too small, too large, or not the one the developer intended.
Not to troll, but this is exactly the kind of thing that has much more effect than technical people believe.
Is it something in the design? The freely available fonts?
Here.
Otherwise I could connect to the network and inject my own version of the client, complete with back doors etc?
You think you can import Chinese and Korean hardware? That's what the DMCA is for! Illegal merchandise will continue to be confiscated.
DoCoMon!
Race with the Super Mario characters.
Race with the Disney characters.
Race with the Looney Tunes characters.
Race with the Hanna Barbera characters.
Race with the Donkey Kong characters.
Race with the Star Wars characters.
Race with the Austin Powers characters.
Race with the South Park characters.
Race with the Muppet Show characters.
Race with the Disney characters again, except something went wrong and only three disney characters are there.
You know where were heading, don't you? Mary-Kate and Ashley mall racing, that's where.
God help us. God help us all.
Let the parents know what the game contains - violence (to what degree?), sexual situations, alcohol, religion, whatever. Don't slap on a 'teen' or 'mature' rating - let them decide whether the content is appropriate for the children.
Not all 13 year olds can handle the same content, and you know not all teen-rated games have the same 'harfulness' to even the average teen, let alone an individual.
The Nintendo/Mattel PowerGlove
Sourceforge project to create Linux drivers
Now we just need a GUI development environment.
Let's face it: the person who has the talent and time to code a game is not always the same person who has the talent and time to script a story, draw the graphics or create sounds. We "need" tools to let these people work together to create the next Loom / The Dig / Monkey Island etc. And a way to get the story writers interested in the first place.
(Score: 5, Spooky)
(Score: 5, Creepy)
(Score: 5, Freaky)
Wouldn't that mean that if you changed two input bits, all output bits would stay the same?
the TiVo is a wonder of UI design. Although not perfect, it's getting there. After a few minutes with the unit, we were one.
This is why it won my fierce loyalty. Software that's designed to be used is so rare in today's world that whenever I find it, I feel like it is my friend. It likes me, and it will do what I ask instead of fighting me.
It's going to take more than capacity to make me even look elsewhere. If another company can do that, TiVo will - I'd rather wait for them than fight with a competitor.
A friend lost 3 work days last week (as did everybody in his company) when their systems got hit. He's been telling the boss for, what, three years now that IIS is a time bomb. Last week's events didn't convince the boss, of course - everybody knows windows is the only OS and IIS is the only web server so we have no choice etc.
I don't know whether to hope this report makes them reconsider - how is my friend supposed to feel if they run over and make Gartner-induced changes after his similar recommendations were repeatedly ignored just because he's a geek and we all know geeks hate microsoft but we smart business types know microsoft is rich so their products must be the best and I'm ranting and raving and need to stop now.
Of course, the 'cube is supposed to have non standard media so even if you could develop on it (much more user friendly according to professional game developers) how would you actually get the code in the machine?
It's amazing, but it seems right now microsoft's product is the only one that embraces (and extends?) hobbyists, with plans for free/cheap SDKs, standard(?) media and - wow - no territorial lockout! Is microsoft the way to go, pioneer of openness and interoperability? refute.
I know a 12 year old girl who can't even tolerate cartoon violence, much less fighting games, and Sonic's her favorite character in the whole world. Every one of these games is a labor of love.
You can get a new Dreamcast with Sonic Adventure, a memory card and another game that has the word Sonic in the title but doesn't really count for $100 new. Various PC Sonic games (CD , Sonic and Knuckles collection etc) Can be found in bargain bins for $5-$20.
Please tell me it's not the same Infocom as this one.
In addition to the FBI, they may well find themselves in a legal battle with Activision, who hold all rights to the Infocom property.
Have a look at this Usability study of console games.
Is it just me, or do all ./ book reviews get a rating of 8? Good enough to care about covering, not as good as we would have done it ourselves.
"The illustrator", Gilsoft, 1983. Perhaps Adobe need to change the name of their product?
Can the next poll be "would you like to see coverage of consumer products in DVD format?" please?
At some point in the future, practically all communication between devices will at least be encrypted, and not by the application. I don't know if we have to wait for IPv6, or even if it will be ready then, but I know that as an application developer when I open a socket I want to specify the minimum level of encryption I want, the maximum I need, and to be able to get an idea of how secure the connection is. And server certificates should not be a barrier for encryption.
As for establishing identities, I'm sure somebody else will have much better idea (validate against a domain's PK server? a completely centralized repository?)